Hold Me
by Silver Blazen
Summary: She can't deny that she needs him. It's a waging battle inside. It becomes a dividing line, and she knows that he grieves for a stolen lifetime. But she can be the solid ground his needs when the storms come. She can hold him in those moments when he surrenders his pain; she'll always be there when his heart calls for her. (CW: Romangers)


**Hold Me**

 **All characters belong to Marvel Comics**

After leaving the conference room, Natasha found him bracing his weight against the stair rail, light careless over his back at the moment he lowered his head into his hand. The vivo smart phone was tucked under his crossed arm as he silently wept, hiding the cascade of tears with no avail. Steve lost an anchor that always reeled him back into the past. Peggy Carter had passed away in her sleep. That was the text message left undeleted on the screen of the phone. A painful reminder that he was too late. She was gone when he needed her to most. Natasha saw the solid ground shaking beneath his feet. He was faulting into a void of unreserved despair.

That was the text message left undeleted on the screen of the phone. A painful reminder that he was too late. She was gone when he needed her to most. Natasha saw the solid ground shaking beneath his feet. He was faulting into a void of unreserved despair.

With her collective sage-green eyes, Natasha took in the grievous exposure of indescribable pain before advancing within his proximity. She ran out of pretexts for following him. Still, she was conscious about distance. The closeness between them was tangible and assuring."I knew you would hiding out be down here, yeah I can only take so much of Tony's arrogance and then I need a breather." She played out, with coolness in her husky voice and diverted mentioning the reason why Steve was isolated from the rest of their team. Giving him solace couldn't be avoided. "I know why you're here and I'm not going ask much about the message, but if you need support on this one, you just have to ask, Steve."

"Peg's gone Nat," Steve whispered dismally, the firmness of his deep timbre faded with unbridled sobs. He never looked up at her, shadows were overcasting his dark blue sweater, as flecks of daylight touched his golden-blond hair. Deciding not to engage her with a wetted stare, his eyes remain leveled to the steps. He didn't want her to see his errant tears. "I never got a chance to give her that one dance. Boy, I wanted to, Peg held onto that promise and I failed to give it."

Irrationally, Natasha shook her head, refusing to believe that. She felt differently against the breach of sentiment. Her impassive demeanor held softness of a genuine look to convey her understanding. She heard the volumes of his heartache and felt the presence of detachment grew wickedly in him.

Without being dominated by the urges to run, she clicked her heels down and stood on the step behind him. Silence echoed over them. In a continuous effort, she reached for him. The tenderness of her dainty hand weighted over thick and steeled muscle forming his felt a friction of connective heat as she held onto him, waiting to stare into the intensity of his piercing azure eyes again. Involuntarily in a harboring of control, her full crimson lips parted, to ease out the right words to keep him grounded as pain sailed through him."You never failed to deliver that promise, Steve, you went back to her and give her some good memories to fall back on when she couldn't remember what she had."

His response was slow, the throbbing ache became a blaze of unshed tears. Natasha searched into the fierceness of his pure cerulean eyes held tumultuous swells of a restless sea, the impenetrable depths were testing the limits of their mutual trust. Steve slanted his weight against the railing and held the phone into the clench of his rigid palm evident to a hollow sob ripping from his throat. He just stood there frozen in stillness.

'We can go home, my darling...' Peggy's words replayed in his scouring thoughts at the second, a fresh sheen of tears glistened over his sharpened cheeks. The loss of his best girl was unendurable, constant as his unyielding heart splintered open. It emboldened him to walk away.

"I can't believe she's really gone..." He choked up harshly, his breath came up torturous and grated, holding wrenched emotion. Natasha never saw him wear the semblance of defeat, his commanding demeanor was always stoic and determined in the face battle. Watching him release unbidden pain, it felt gut-wrenching. "If I hadn't been so busy wearing the uniform, I could've stayed with her until the end."

"I don't think she would've wanted that, Steve," Natasha felt a trace of smirk ghosting over her lips. She had the highest regard for Agent Peggy Carter, a strong and hellbent woman, a difference maker that inspired so many young agents to carry on the fight and test the limits of humanity. She was a beckon of fire that burned the brightest against the enfolding darkness of HYDRA. She never lost her way. Most importantly, Peggy never lost her faith in a scrawny kid from Brooklyn. Steve loved her. It was real and unbroken devotion that never steered away.

He was falling again, the weight of Peggy's loss crushed over his heart, but Natasha's sought his shoulder with a firm and vital grip, having the utmost temerity to hold him against her. In deft strokes of her lithe fingers kneaded over the rigid and broad muscles of his back. The penetrating rush of heat funneled with adrenaline, it wasn't voluntary, it was as inherent as breathing.

She wasn't abandoning ground between them felt unshakeable. Passion seared deep for so long it stirred and never ruptured the surface as she listened to echoes of his desperate heartbeat contrasting his grief. She felt his raw breaths gusting over her skin, that evoked pulses of resistance changed to ecstasy. Her hand moved up, close enough to rest her palm over his set jaw, still reluctant to deliver a reverent caress–she needed to define her heart. The value of their friendship was evolving into a nexus of trust. She felt everything.

Natasha's fingers wove into his blond locks, every cord of muscle flexed in the wake of her soothing touch. As Steve cried, she pulled him into an embrace and when his chin dropped on her shoulder, a new submission of tears dampened through cascades of her copper-auburn ringlets. "It's okay," she murmured, relishing the thermal heat of his massive body aligned hers. "Just let everything go, don't fight the pain, Steve."

Steve evicted his restraint and buried his face into her jacket, the coolness of leather melted into his chest. "I c-can't let Peggy go," he sobbed with an uneven hitch, and his heart strained every beat. He was trying to salvage a vestige of hope. At the moment of eased breath, his guard was down and he felt anchorless: no direction to take him back home. "She was all I had left." He couldn't hold in the unbidden pain anymore. "Now she's gone and I'm alone. So alone."

"You're not alone," Natasha promised in a faint rasp, irreverently convincing herself that her words held truth. No matter how far they would be divided, she would come back to him. A fueling desire blazed into her veins, insatiable that she couldn't relent against those urges.

For too long she never gave a second glance back, always strayed away before allowing genuine choices dominate her. The Black Widow had roamed the darkened roads isolated from humanity. Doctor Bruce Banner was a comrade for alteration, she used him to test her limits of tolerance, but he left her to stare back into hollow walls. His absence felt like a knife in the heart. Cutting deeper, until she extracted it out.

Natasha remembered the cold dawns of Russian, the emptiness that winter's light contrasted. No warmth of human touch was in the Bolshoi theater anchoring her into contentment. She had lost her surrogate father Ivan Petrovich Bezukhov, the only decent man who gave little Natalia glimpses of dreams to become Moscow ballerina, that was before he traded her innocence-soul away to Lukin. She never saw him again. All she felt was the opposite of empathy- a sustainable coldness of endurance. Along the roads she had taken, she had lost honorable men because of her unforgiving past. Steve was a steady heartbeat in the darkness, a solid embrace of dependence that couldn't be shaken.

"We stick together, Steve," she whispered tenderly, feeling the grip of his hands tensing over her back. He was holding her like a shield, defining their closeness, whereas, she weighed into his touch. Echoes of her past seemed undetectable. It was a moment with him, and somehow she wanted to claim it as her eternity. She couldn't be selfish and use the convenience of his warmth.

He was tortured by unassailed grief. Banishing away her desires, her deft and lithe fingers cradled the hawkish contour of his squared jaw, and held him grounded as the intensity of his oceanic azure eyes captured her nonchalant gaze."I know there's going to be a division between all of us, but maybe it will bring us closer together. Nothing lasts forever, right?"

"Right," he sighed deeply, composing his emotions. The ebbing ache in his chest diminished, as his rough fingers trace a frisson of heat over her leather sleeve, reverently that his bare touch invaded the coldness rushing through her. Right here in that fraction of a second, he felt like home to her.

"Thanks for keepin' me standing, Nat." His leveled and raspy voice held an echo of unyielding devotion that only she heard when the soft fullness of his lips graced her cheek. It was a chaste kiss, true to their unity.

"Promise me, Steve," Natasha urged and with controlled power, she rested her head beneath his clenched jaw, melting into his shielding warmth, equally. She wasn't sure if the Accords would end the Avengers, the new lives they lived—she knew that he would never abandon her. "We stay together. No matter what happens tomorrow."

The moment was real. It was constant. She didn't need him to answer. She knew it.


End file.
